and ain't i a woman?: Winning allies in the fight for women's liberation
On International Women's Day (March 8), 1917, 50,000 women took to the streets of Petrograd, protesting against food shortages resulting from Russia's participation in World War I. They appealed to metalworkers to join their action, and on March 10, 90,000 people marched in the streets. By March 15, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and, according to Russian writer Raya Dunayevskaya, "thus dawned upon the earth the day of destruction for the Romanov monarchy".
The political events started then led to the October 1917 Revolution in which the Russian workers and peasants took power from the capitalists and landlords. The abolition of capitalist rule in Russia, among other things, provided unprecedented education and employment access for women, and, for a brief period, free abortion access.
As I looked out at this year's International Women's Day rally in Perth, I couldn't help but wonder how different the outcome might have been if half the women in Petrograd had picked up their placards and left upon the arrival of the male metalworkers. Sound ridiculous? Well, that's exactly what happened at Perth's IWD march this year.
Objecting to the organisers' decision to welcome all supporters of women's liberation on the march (including male supporters), some separatist feminists boycotted the protest and others left just before the march.
Why would any woman who called herself as a feminist attempt to weaken an annual feminist event? Separatist feminists advocate separation from men as a political strategy. Believing, like other so-called radical feminists, that women's oppression is caused just by male domination, separatist feminists view all men as oppressors of women. Many view this as a by-product of biological differences between the sexes.
The struggle for the liberation of women, according to the separatists, involves a struggle against all men. Women can thus only free themselves from sexist oppression, the separatists believe, by freeing themselves from the company of men. At the 2001 IWD rally in Perth, separatist feminists marched enclosed within a purple ribbon of "women's space". This year, these women did not march at all.
Resistance members were involved in the International Women's Day Collective, which organised the march. We supported the decision of the collective to encourage men to join the march, and were disappointed by these women's decision to leave.
The liberation of women is not counterposed to the liberation of all humanity. We live in a society where the needs of a small, ultra-rich few are put above the needs of the great majority. The wealth of the Kerry Packers is built upon the labour of millions of women and men who create more wealth than they earn.
The oppression of women — who take responsibility for the vast majority of domestic tasks, childcare and care of the elderly, who suffer from sexist attitudes, rape and harassment and who are paid less for less skilled work — does benefit men. Men get better jobs, better education than women and many take little or no responsibility for domestic tasks.
But the great majority of men and women would be better off in a world where in which such sexist inequality did not exist.
The oppression of women helps to buttress this unequal, oppressive society — it is not the result of the innate aggression of men, but the result of a society constructed to benefit a tiny number of super-rich men.
The strongest feminist movement would be one which not only mobilised millions of women fighting for their liberation, but also convinced millions of men to fight alongside them, swapping male privilege for the infinitely preferable gain of solidarity against a common oppressor.
Pursuing solidarity of the oppressed means making links with other struggles, such as the refugees' rights movement and the anti-war movement. Not only does the persecution of refugees and war impact disproportionately on women, these struggles also challenge the unequal structure of society.
There is, obviously, a need for some women-only organising in the women's liberation movement. Sexist society undermines women's confidence, and often women-only organising bodies, such as the International Women's Day Collective, ensure that women can develop the confidence and skills to lead the fight for their own liberation. But this should not lead to rejection of alliances with other oppressed people.
The Russian working class could not have pulled off a revolution without the participation of working-class women, but neither can we truly achieve liberation without winning over working-class men.
BY AMIE HAMILTON
[The author is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, March 20, 2002.
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